Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The weather conditions for the day were really tricky to work with. The uncertainty in the beginning of the day, and then the sudden complete change of conditions made it a tough day to work... It forced me to be a bit more experimental. I'll let you decide if it was succesful or not.I did this study in about an hour. It was hard getting the blue paint to cooperate for some reason.... The reason? It was a tube of oil paint that got mixed into my bag by accident! I pushed the fog effect way more than what was there in reality, mainly so I'd hafta paint less (just being honest here) but also to make it more interesting.

In the middle of this piece is when the sky started clearing up. The clouds and the light was totally different from when I started. The clouds did not hold still long enough to paint them very faithfully, so I had to fake them...I did a lot of lifting off with a wet Viva paper towel. Gouache tends to be easier to lift off than transparent watercolor.

This was a half-hour quick study done just for the value and drawing's sake. Didn't want to get into the color. It was mostly monotone greens and grays, I can probably throw a wash of green in photoshop over it and it will look pretty faithful.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

It was a gloomy afternoon, with drops of rain briefly in Novato. Although it was a bit chilly, that didn't stop 9 North Bay members to trek out to the Petaluma Marina. Cloud formations were amazing and scattered lighting along the hills were great! During the late afternoon, the sun decided to peak out and cleared a path to some blue skies.

Thank you to Alfredo's hospitality and opening his studio doors to our paint out group members!Beautiful studio and school, perfect for anyone interested in learning to paint figurative and landscapes.